Category: Writing

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What should every Java programmer know?

Front cover for the book "97 Things Every Java Programmer Should Know"

Preface to 97 Things Every Java Programmer Should Know

The mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting.

Plutarch

What should every Java programmer know? It depends. It depends on who you ask, why you ask, and when you ask. There are at least as many suggestions as there are points of view. In a language, platform, ecosystem, and community that affects the software and lives of so many people, and has done so from one century to the next, from one core to many, from megabytes to gigabytes, it depends on more than one could ever hope to cover in a single book by a single author.

Instead, in this book, we draw on some of those many perspectives to collect together for you a cross-section and representation of the thinking in the Java-verse. It's not every thing, but it is 97 of them from 73 contributors. To quote the preface of 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know:

With so much to know, so much to do, and so many ways of doing so, no single person or single source can lay claim to “the one true way.”. The contributions do not dovetail like modular parts, and there is no intent that they should—if anything, the opposite is true. The value of each contribution comes from its distinctiveness. The value of the collection lies in how the contributions complement, confirm, and even contradict one another. There is no overarching narrative: it is for you to respond to, reflect on, and connect together what you read, weighing it against your own context, knowledge, and experience.

What should every Java programmer know? In the 97 things we have sampled, the answers span the language, the JVM, testing techniques, the JDK, community, history, agile thinking, implementation know-how, professionalism, style, substance, programming paradigms, programmers as people, software architecture, skills beyond code, tooling, GC mechanics, non-Java JVM languages… and more.

In the spirit of the first 97 Things books, each contribution in this volume follows a nonrestrictive, open-source model. Each contribution is licensed under a Commons Attribution 4.0 License. Many of the contributions also first appeared on the 97 Things Medium publication.

All these things are fuel and fire for your thoughts and your code.

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New! Landing page for Getting to Know IntelliJ IDEA

Background image of the colours in the Getting to Know IntelliJ IDEA book

One of the things you have to do as a self published author is marketing. I mean, obviously you have to do EVERYTHING as a self published author, that's the thing.

I've just finished creating a landing page for Getting to Know IntelliJ IDEA. It's one of those things that should be "easy" and "quick", and yet after all the work we put into the book, we never got around to it.

Fortunately, now it's a few months after our official launch, we have a lot more information to put on the landing page, like: videos, interviews, and recommendations from people who liked the book.

It's also yet another example of how "easy" and "quick" turns into a morning's-worth of work, and, more than that, self-doubt and dithering on where to place things and how to present information. It's a morning of Googling how to do things in WordPress.

There's still a lot to do, not least of all removing all the "Trisha Gee" site branding and making it into a proper standalone page. But it does the job.

Anyway, take a look. And buy the book!

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Writing A Book Is Hard

Getting to Know IntelliJ IDEA book cover

Hey Helen, I know you were disappointed you missed out on a chance to contribute to 97 Things Every Java Programmer Should Know, do you want to write a book with me?

Trisha Gee, Spring 2020

That's how it started.

It's that easy.

[Maniacal laughter in the background]

I have long wanted to write a book. It didn't really matter what type of book (novel, technical) or on which topic (I have opinions on everything). I wanted My Name On The Front Of A Book. I wanted to be An Author. I knew Helen also wanted to be An Author, and that by working together we could keep each other accountable and actually do this.

Continue reading "Writing A Book Is Hard"